But, by summing your post and the GP, one can easily hypothesize that the causal relation goes the other way around: sinking companies hire expensive CEOs to try and save themselves. Often that doesn't succeed, because the company was sinking for reasons deeper than poor leadership.

The real question is: do success rates improve for sinking companies that hire a expensive CEO versus those that keep their existing leadership or hire no-name CEOs?

Is it possible that firms in trouble need to offer higher compensation to attract and retain CEOs?

I skimmed the paper and couldn't find a counter argument, but I didn't understand all the jargon.